Maybe it’s the sweltering heat. I actually had to hail a cab for the 100-or-so meters from the grocery store to my house, and I consider it the best 35 baht I have ever spent. Maybe it’s the hordes of diners who, in an attempt to avoid the Red Shirts protesting downtown, have been swarming my neighborhood and turning it into a literal feeding frenzy for parking lots, restaurant tables, and ice cream. Or maybe it was the disappointing lunch I had today (how can your restaurant symbol be the picture of a mussel, and then have no mussels available for lunch? How does that happen?) A dozen Kumamoto oysters failed to salvage the meal.

In any case, I’m feeling a bit down. When life gets this way, I do what a lot of other people do in the same situation, and eat my feelings. And if you are a fan of tender, moist, smoky flesh, something like this will likely do the trick:

Roasted duck and crispy pork at Jibgi Ped Yang

Located across from the old Nanglerng wet market on Nakhon Sawan Road, Jibgi has what I think may be the juiciest, least-bony roasted Chinese duck around (you know those shards of bone that stick to the fatty parts of the skin? I hate those too). The skin may not be as crispy as at Mandarin, and the open-air dining room is not as swanky as, say, the Mandarin Oriental’s Noble House, but the duck here is definitely worth a gander (get it? I crack myself up). Don’t forget to order the accompanying stewed duck soup for an extra 20 baht.

While we were there, the duck on rice (30-40 baht) was certainly a popular dish, eaten with gusto by the octagenarians who occupied the neighboring table. It was here that we learned how to express our appreciation of Chinese food: with much clacking of chopsticks and a cacophony of slurping (the art of slurping is similarly practiced in Japan, but I have never learned how to do it without getting broth in my eye). So in our way, we were being China Rude, something we hope to rectify the next time we wander over to that part of town.

stewed duck soup

Thank you, @Specialkrb, for this final set of pictures. Looking forward to your return to this neck of the woods in July!

4 responses to “Duckfest, or How Not to be China Rude”

Now I’ve got “China Rude” to the tune of “China Grove” stuck in my head. Again. Luckily I love the Doobie Brothers.

If your readers make it to Jibgi and manage to recross the street to the wet market without getting run over by motorcycles, army trucks, or tuk-tuks, they should buy a fruity shakes from one of the stands. I ordered a thang mo bun (watermelon) and Bangkok Glutton got a nam som bun (orange). They were 20 baht and giant, even by my farang standards.